There are good points in that article, but it falls into the common trap: if you're going to do space-based solar, the one thing you probably wouldn't do is mak

There are good points in that article, but it falls into the common trap: if you're going to do space-based solar, the one thing you probably wouldn't do is make your collecting area out of a load of PV panels. If you want a mahoosive collecting area, the best idea is probably acres of mylar sheets, reflecting onto as small a converter as you can get away with. That fundamentally changes the available sunlight watts per launch kg ratio. You've just bought yourself a heat dissipation problem, and it does nothing to help with the downlink, but those aren't insurmountable.